Run and Hide
by bird by snow
Summary: The one thing that Rogue knows for certain is that when Logan catches her, he's going to get his revenge. Set after a slightly AU version of X3.
1. Prologue

**_Prologue_**

Jean was dead, but somehow her death didn't feel real to me. Even as I watched the others gather over her fallen body to pay their respects, it felt like I was watching a play. Kitty's face was buried in Bobby's shoulder, Colossus was standing stoic guard, and Storm was on her knees smoothing Jean's hair. I should have been part of the tableau as well, but I couldn't bring myself to join my teammates.

Jean was dead because _I_ had killed her.

It wasn't anything that I had planned, and it certainly hadn't been my intent when I'd woken up that morning. But I'd had a good reason.

If I hadn't done it, Logan would have.

I'd seen the resigned look on his face, and had known what it meant. He'd run through all the possible scenarios in his head, and then reached the same conclusion as everyone else—Phoenix needed to be stopped, and with his healing factor, he was the only one that stood a chance at taking her down.

Logan had always been the one to protect us, and to shield us from the true horrors of war. He was the one that took the difficult kills because he believed that that was his job. We had let him become our weapon because it was convenient.

He'd been prepared to take care of our "problem" this time too, and the rest of the team had been content to stand aside and let him do it. No one would have given him a direct order to kill Jean, but that was the beautiful thing about Logan, he was always willing to put himself in harm's way in order to save the rest of us. As if he was the expendable one.

He turned to me before making his final run at Phoenix, and caught my gaze for a long moment. It was something he had done dozens of times before. I was supposed to nod in response—both to assure him that I was okay, and to confirm that I had his back in whatever move he was about to make. But I couldn't. Because when our eyes met, I knew that I was going to lose him.

Unlike everyone else, I had carried Logan's plan one step further in my mind, and watched a horrible series of events unfold. If Logan killed Jean, it would break him. He would shut everyone out, and the guilt would slowly eat away at him, until one day, he convinced himself that we'd all be better off if he left the mansion. He would continue down a self-destructive spiral of fighting and drinking, and would end up far more damaged than he'd been when we'd met in Laughlin City.

I didn't want that kind of life for him. Logan deserved better, even if he didn't think so.

There had been another solution to the Phoenix problem. The second of two no-win scenarios, and the one that, in Logan's haste to fill the role of executioner, he'd forgotten about. Whatever he could survive, I could survive too.

Someone once told me that when a choice is difficult to make, that's how you know that it's the right one. That was why I was still a mutant. And that was how I knew that I needed to be the one to kill Jean.

I was the only person in the world that possessed the ability to take down the mighty Wolverine without a struggle. That was the power that he had given me when he'd decided to let me into his life. He never put his guard up when we were alone. By exploiting that vulnerability I knew that I would be destroying my relationship with him. Logan would never trust me again.

And yet, I hadn't let that stop me from making the hard decision.

It was selfish, but I'd wanted to give Logan one last, good memory of me before I sunk the proverbial knife into his back. Something for him to think back on, and remember that we'd had some good times too. His brows had crinkled in confusion when I pulled him aside, but then I'd gone up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his in a quick kiss, and he hadn't thought to ask questions. While he was distracted, my bare hand slid around the back of his neck, and I drained his life force with quiet efficiency.

His eyes never left mine—at least not until they rolled back into his head. I didn't think that I would ever be able to forget the way that his expression had turned from happily surprised to painfully betrayed.

There was one thing that _I_ had forgotten, and didn't realize until I was helping Logan slump to the ground. Whatever hurt him, hurt me too. And I felt like someone had punched me in the heart.

He wouldn't have been able to hear me, but I'd whispered some things in his ear that I thought he should know—how sorry I was, how much I loved him. Then I'd dashed into the fray, and done what had fucking been necessary.

Jean was once a friend and a respected teammate, but I had looked past those inconvenient labels in order to do my job. That was how I had been trained. That was how _Logan_ had trained me. If there was a threat, I eliminated it. I did it quickly, efficiently, and I didn't hesitate. Hesitation gets you and your team killed—that was Logan's mantra. I had absorbed all of his lessons over the years, and then, on the battlefield, I had absorbed the rest.

The element of surprise had worked in my favor. Jean never expected me to heal, or to have claws. A telepath should've known better, really, but she had been busy being the Phoenix, so I guess it was understandable that she'd missed Logan lying in a heap amongst the rubble.

I suppose, in a strange way, that Logan _had _been the one to kill Jean. He had just done it from behind my eyes. I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least the real Logan would never know what it felt like to have his claws buried in the gut of the woman he loved. It had been horrific enough for _me_.

I hadn't lingered at the scene, and when I'd stalked away from Jean's body, I had caught glimpses of my teammates' shocked expressions. I was sure that with Jubilee's flare for storytelling, my epic tale of heroism would be embellished. It wouldn't matter what anyone told Logan, though. I wouldn't be the savior in his eyes.

I would be Judas.

Logan would never understand that I had sacrificed everything because I thought that there should be someone looking out for _him_ for once. From his perspective, I would always be the woman that had slipped past his defenses, invaded his mind, and stolen his powers. I'd be the woman that had murdered his 'Jeannie'. I would be the one that had robbed the Wolverine of his kill. He would hate me with every fiber of his being.

I had made my decision to kill Jean in a split second while a war raged around me. I hadn't had time to stop and think through all possible consequences of my actions. I hadn't anticipated anything beyond the inevitability of losing my best friend.

But as I stood on the periphery of the smoldering battlefield, with Jean's blood on my charred hands and Logan's turbulent memories mixing with my own, a chilling new thought emerged. Logan wasn't going to just let my betrayal go unpunished.

He was going to want revenge.

As soon as he woke up, the hunt would begin. I'd have a head-start, but I wouldn't be able to hide forever. The Logan in my head was adamant about that. _You'll make a mistake_, he taunted, _and one day, I'll find you_.

In a straight fight, even having his powers, I wouldn't be able to take him. He was physically stronger than I was, and metal beat bone every time. One day, he'd catch me, and then I reckoned he'd try to kill me.

I'd give him about even odds of being successful. The stolen mutation felt different than it had in the past—like I had finally taken too much from him, too many times.

But what would happen, I wondered, if he stabbed me like I had stabbed Jean, and I _didn't_ die? I knew the kind of brutal and relentless torture that he was capable of inflicting. I had dark memories of the Wolverine playing with his prey. I'd felt what he'd felt as he'd brought men to the brink of death and then pulled back. A small part of him had gotten off on the bloodshed.

A quick death by his hand would be an act of mercy in comparison, and I wasn't afraid of that. No, the thing that caused me to break out in a cold sweat was the knowledge that when he caught me, he was going to make me _suffer_.

There was only one thing that I could do, and it was the same thing that had caused me to cross paths with Logan in the first place.

I ran.


	2. A Midnight Dreary

"Our challenger tonight, the Raven!"

That was my cue. I gave a curt nod to the crowd.

"She may look like a lightweight, but she can hold her own against men twice her size! Who will step up to take her down?"

When I first started on the cage-fighting circuit, they had only wanted to pit me against other women. It had been a slow way to make money because there weren't women in every city looking for a fight, and often I was told to just take a seat and let the men do what they did best.

They stopped telling me that once I'd started picking fights with barflies just to prove that I could. It had taken a while for me to get really good, though. I had all of Logan's practical knowledge, but none of the muscle memory to actually pull off any of the moves. In theory, I'd been the best damn fighter in North America. In practice, I'd been mediocre. After two years, however, I'd honed my craft.

"—Rob Danger!"

I paused while tugging on my left glove and eyed up my opponent.

_Seriously?_

Of course, I was one to talk. With my black clothes, black hair, and dark eye make-up, I had turned myself into a character as well. Anna Raven. I had picked the raven, because it was a death omen. It worked on a couple of levels—one, as a reminder that I was being hunted by death, and two, as a warning to my opponents. No one else got the joke, but I thought it was clever.

Re-inventing myself had been a necessity, although I had gone through a few, less macabre, iterations before settling on my current alias. At first, I had thought that in order to be invisible, I needed to be bland and unmemorable, but all that had done was make me seem like someone that was trying not to draw attention to herself. I didn't even question how much it made me stick out until I saw Logan in the front office of my motel in Des Moines, speaking with the night manager.

I never imagined that Logan had forgotten about me, but I had hoped that he would be too busy at the school to worry about seeking immediate revenge. Des Moines had been the first real scare I'd had. Up until that point, I'd thought I'd been careful. That almost-encounter had rattled me so much, that I'd fled to the woods and spent a couple of weeks living off the land before deciding that it was probably safe to return to civilization as the Raven.

I became invisible by hiding in plain sight.

Over a year had passed since Des Moines, and Logan hadn't resurfaced yet. It made me nervous. The threat of his reappearance cast a constant shadow over everything I did.

I took a deep breath to clear my head and immediately wished I hadn't. The stink of sweat and stale beer saturated every molecule of air in the bar, and Mr. Danger's clothes smelled like they hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in weeks.

_Lovely._

My opponent leered at me. Fighting meant that he could touch me in socially unacceptable ways. If I had to count the number of times that I had been felt up in the cage…well, I wasn't sure that numbers went that high to be honest. I kinda wanted him to try it, though—it'd be the last time those fingers would work for a while. Fighting meant that I could hurt him in legally frowned-upon ways, and a little part of me craved that violence.

Danger-man was easily twice my weight, which meant more power behind his blows, but I was faster. He also telegraphed his moves. He definitely thought he was hot shit, but for me he wasn't even a challenge_._Hopefully, someone that night _would_ be. Easy fights never took enough of the edge off.

He came at me, and I waited until the last second, stuck my arm out, and struck the hollow of his throat. His eyes filled with unshed tears, and he went down.

"No need to cry over losing to a girl, Sugar."

The crowd laughed. They liked me better when I entertained them.

My opponent was unceremoniously dragged out of the cage, and he was replaced by a blur of men who had all been waiting to take their turn at me. One by one, they went down. By the time I finished, I'd broken a sweat, and my bloodlust was finally sated.

Some idiot approached me while I was waiting for my beer after I'd been declared that night's victor.

"You must be one of those mutant freaks," the man-with-a-death-wish said.

I didn't even look at him. I'd been down that road before. And so had Logan, I remembered. So, I knew how not to deal with the situation. "Walk away," I warned.

"How else do you explain it?"

I rolled my eyes and then swiveled on my stool to face him. "You saw what I did back there? And how little effort it took? I could do the same to you, except we're not in a cage, so none of the rules apply." I leaned in and lowered my voice. "I could kill you and not lose any sleep over it. No jury in the world would convict lil' ol' me for defending myself against the big scary man." I laid it on thick with the Southern accent at the end.

Thankfully, he had enough sense to back off. I found his deer-in-the-headlights look mildly amusing, so I blew him a kiss. I didn't think I'd be seeing him again.

When I finished the beer, I left the bar, and the bouncer followed me out to my truck. It was a standard courtesy at most of the joints I fought at, and I didn't mind because they did it for the men too. It was supposed to be a deterrent to anyone thinking about waiting in the parking lot to ambush the winner and take the prize money. The way I saw it though, any fool that attacked me deserved to get his face smashed into the pavement. Still, it was nice to know that I would have back up in case Logan picked that moment to attack. I figured I could let the two men fight and then slip out quietly during the distraction.

The parking lot was empty, however, and after checking under the truck, in the bed, and in the cab, I was satisfied that I was going to live long enough to make it back to my room.

I drove past the motel, one of my new habits, and scoped out _that_ parking lot for anything suspicious. Normally, Logan preferred a motorcycle, but if he was planning to take me somewhere that no one could hear me scream, I thought he'd prefer a truck, or an SUV. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, however, and when I finally approached my room, I could see that the small pebble I'd placed in front of the door hadn't moved.

Yes, Logan could've moved it, entered, and then replaced it after exiting. _But_ he couldn't have replaced it while he was still _inside_. The window didn't open and there were no other ways in or out. That meant that no surprise attacks were waiting for me when I opened the door. I let out the breath that I hadn't realized I was holding.

Once inside my room, I went through my nightly ritual of locking and blocking the door. I laid a complicated and precariously balanced trap that would wake me up if anyone tried to enter. I also kept a gun on the nightstand and an adamantium knife under my pillow, just for good measure.

In bed that night, surrounded by my weapons and makeshift burglar alarm, I didn't feel as reassured as I normally did. Instead, I felt exhausted, and I began to question how much longer I could keep it up. All the waiting and watching and wondering. Not staying anywhere more than a few nights, or making any friends. Not getting complacent. Locking myself up.

I was pretty sure that it was going to break me one day.

If I'd thought I could take Logan, I would've been tempted to make the first move. To put _him_ on the defensive. But I knew that I couldn't. So, I was stuck in a vicious cycle of running and hiding with seemingly no way out.

I yawned and reached under the pillow to check once again for the cold metal blade. I wasn't going to find any answers that night, but I was safe for a few more hours at least.


	3. Stillness Broken

I woke up at some point after ten the next morning and lay in bed for another half-hour with my thoughts. I didn't have anywhere to be, and didn't particularly feel like getting up. It was on those lazy mornings, when I was still coming down from winning a fight and wasn't fully awake, that I allowed myself to think about Logan in a way that I couldn't during the harsh reality of day.

With my eyes closed, I could remember the feel of his chest—like flannel-wrapped steel—beneath my fingers. I could hear his heart beating a steady, reassuring rhythm under my cheek. While I was still half-asleep, I could acknowledge what I had lost.

There were evenings that I used to spend in Logan's room, curled up beside him on the couch while we watched TV. I consistently gave him grief for his terrible movie choices, and he always complained when I fell asleep and missed the best parts. Regardless, he kept inviting me back, and I kept accepting. I think we both recognized how badly we craved that human connection, and how desperately neither of us wanted to be alone, even if we never said it out loud.

Bobby never understood our relationship. Like everyone else, he looked at Logan, and only saw Wolverine. He looked at me, and was confused that Logan didn't see an untouchable pariah. Our relationship was a curiosity to him—something to be treated with mild amusement and general skepticism.

When I was with Bobby, nothing was ever left to chance. We couldn't do anything without first planning who was going to cover up which body parts, and if we wanted to kiss, we always had to discuss how long it could reasonably last beforehand. I finally broke up with him when I got sick of feeling like my mutation was the third wheel on all of our dates.

The crazy thing was, that without Logan, I didn't think I would have realized that it was even possible for someone to look past my skin and just see Marie. I think I would've become Rogue and then eventually forgotten what 'normal' had felt like.

The night after I officially ended it with Bobby, Logan took me to a bar to cheer me up. I was more than a few months shy of 21 at the time, but no one had argued with him and insisted on seeing my ID. We drank and threw insults, and laughed, and I didn't feel sad. I realized that I hadn't loved Bobby, not like I should have. He was a crush, and my first boyfriend, but he was never going to be my long-haul guy.

Logan, on the other hand... He kissed me that night. I didn't think he planned it, or even realized what he was doing until his lips brushed against mine. I was pretty sure he'd done it because he'd just finished off our bottle of Talisker and had been half-drunk for a brief moment.

I captured his bottom lip between my teeth and reveled in the delicious groan he made in response. He pulled me up onto the barstool, so that I was straddling his lap, and just took the time to look at me, like he had never really seen me before. And maybe he hadn't, at least not like that. His fingers threaded through the white locks that framed my face, and he looked like he was working up the courage to say something, but then he sobered up, and set me back on my feet.

He told me later, after he'd delivered me safely back to my room, that I deserved a better man than Bobby. I'd believed him at the time, and had naively assumed that he was the better man that he thought I deserved.

My hand slipped past my panties and I imagined what would have happened if I had invited him in that night like I had wanted. I bet he could have found a few creative ways around my mutation. Or maybe in this fantasy, I'd always had control of my powers, and he was just waiting to ravage me until I came to my senses about Bobby. Perhaps he would've taken the opportunity to show me what a real man was like.

I lost myself in the image of Logan taking me hard and rough against my bedroom door. He knew how to hit all the right spots, and when I tumbled over the edge into ecstasy, he followed, grunting as he found his own release inside me. I buried my nose in his neck and willed myself to hold on to his scent for as long as possible.

When my breathing returned to normal, I made the mistake of opening my eyes. I meant to catch Logan's gaze and share a smile with him, but of course he wasn't there. I was alone in my motel room, on the run from a man that only made love to me in my dreams.

After the warmth of the post-orgasm euphoria faded, I always felt worse than I had before I'd started. All of the feelings that I had managed to forget while I was asleep—things like regret, loneliness, and sadness—came flooding back in like ice water in my veins. But there were also new feelings added to the mix. There was guilt for using Logan's memory as masturbation fodder, anger for letting myself get caught up in an illusion, and frustration. Lots and lots of frustration.

Because I knew that no matter how much I felt like shit afterwards, I was just pretending when I told myself that it would never happen again. I was always going to chase what fleeting bit of happiness I could find, and his name was always going to be the one on my lips.

_See, Logan? I don't need you to torture me. I'm doing a bang-up job of it all on my own. _

I hauled my ass out of bed before I imagined what his response to that would be. Nothing good ever lasted. I'd learned that lesson years ago.

Less than a month after that night at the bar, Jean had come home. Only, she hadn't been Jean, and none of us had realized that until it was too late. Not for the first time, I wished that she had stayed dead. We would've all been better off if they'd never found her.

I showered, packed up, and then checked out of my room. I had to pay extra because I'd missed the check-out time by fifteen minutes and didn't feel like arguing. I skipped out on grabbing breakfast because I never ate in the town that I was leaving, just in case.

The radio in my truck proved to be a good distraction from my thoughts, and eventually I found myself singing along to my favorite songs. I let the open roads take me where they wanted to go, without much of an itinerary in mind. I would know that I had reached my next destination when the sun started to get low in the sky.

xxx

The first bar that I found in town didn't do cage-fighting, and the man that served me my food was reluctant to tell me where the match was. I had ways of being persuasive though, and the man finally told me where I could find it, in an exasperated tone that was usually reserved for the phrase, "It's your funeral, honey". I thanked him for the burger, and tipped him generously for the information.

I drove up to the second bar that evening prepared for a fight. I'd changed into my costume—black fitted top, black leather pants, and black knee-high boots. On my belt, I wore a big silver buckle, a subtle nod to the man that was going to kill me one day, and draped a long, black coat over it all. There were a lot of bikes parked out front, but none that smelled like Logan.

I walked in and got a few catcalls, but ignored them. I flagged the bartender down.

"I want to be put on the list."

"What list?"

I jerked my head toward the cage.

He let out a surprised laugh. "I mean, I could put your name down, but there aren't any other women for you to fight. The guys that usually compete are three times your size."

"I know."

"Well if you're looking for a way to end it all, keep looking, sweetheart."

I pointed at the computer next to the cash register. "You got internet on that thing?"

"Of course."

"I've been part of the circuit since last season. Look me up. 'The Raven'. I'll take a whiskey while I wait."

His eyebrows just about shot up to the ceiling, but I got my whiskey.

After some time spent on Google, and some skeptical glances back at me, he must have decided that I fit the description of Anna Raven. For legal reasons, there weren't any pictures of the fights online. Everyone knew that pulling a camera during a match was a good way to get tossed out with a bloody lip and a broken camera.

"If you're not her, and you're stupid enough to pretend to be, you deserve what you get."

I toasted him. "Cheers."

"It says you took down Tiny Joe."

A slow grin spread over my face. Tiny Joe was anything but. That fight had lasted longer than most. By the end of it, I had had a few broken bones, and had lost two teeth, which had thankfully since grown back.

My smile must have looked a bit deranged because the bartender took a step back.

"It was a good fight," I told him.

He refilled my drink—free of charge.

A few hours later, I was back at the motel, and enjoying the high that came from fighting and having three grand in my pocket. I had driven past the parking lot, but didn't notice anything that was cause for alarm. At least, not until I hopped down out of the truck and caught a whiff of cigar smoke. My nostrils flared and I inhaled deeper.

Logan was there.

I tensed as I watched him pull the door to his room shut and start walking in my general direction. There was a cigar in his mouth and a small cooler tucked under one arm, which made me think that he wasn't very well prepared for our epic showdown. Unless the cooler concealed some kind of weapon, it looked more like he was on a leisurely stroll to get some ice.

Clearly, he hadn't been expecting me.

The ice machine was in an alcove located about halfway between our rooms. He hadn't noticed me yet, so if I waited until his back was turned, I thought I _might_ be able to escape undetected.

However, if the wind shifted direction, or if he even so much as glanced toward the parking lot, I was fucked. There was no cover between us, except for the hood of the truck, and I didn't feel good about the fact that I was more or less standing exposed in his peripheral line of sight. If I moved just a little bit, however, the cab of the truck would hide me as he approached.

I very quietly took a half step back, but the motion immediately caught his attention.

"Rogue!"

I froze. His voice sent a bolt of primal fear through me, and I frantically weighed my options. I couldn't make it back to the room. I'd have to abandon my possessions. That was fine, I'd only be leaving behind clothes and toiletries. I didn't own anything with sentimental value. I was a little pissed that I'd have to leave my adamantium knife behind, however. It hadn't been cheap.

Two steps was all it would take to get back into the truck. The keys were in my hand and the door was still unlocked. I wondered if I could get in, start the truck and drive off before he got to me. I gauged the distance between us. Thirty feet if I was being generous. Logan didn't have super-speed, but he was fast. I determined that I could probably make it into the truck, but I had to be prepared for the possibility that he'd jump onto the hood and come through the windshield.

The gun was in the glove compartment, but reaching for it would take time. _Fuck it. _I was going to have to risk it.

My whole assessment of the situation had taken less than a second, and in that time, he hadn't moved.

_Too slow, old man._

I was back in the truck before he dropped the cooler. Unfortunately, my hand didn't want to cooperate, and it shook so damn much that I couldn't get the key in the ignition fast enough.

_Shit! Shitshitshit! _

I went through all the horrible things that he could do in that wasted time. Puncture the tires, punch through window and grab me, etc, etc. I mentally screamed at myself to get a grip, and reached for the glove compartment. I had my hand on the gun just as he came up to the driver's side of the truck. The noise would draw the cops, but that wasn't my problem.

I shot him through the window, three times. _Pop, pop, pop_. Glass flew everywhere. That didn't matter, I would have to abandon the truck anyway. Logan staggered back, and I finally got the engine started.

I peeled out of there and didn't look back.


	4. Unmerciful Disaster

Twelve miles of highway later, I pulled off onto the shoulder because I thought I was going to puke. Stopping wasn't ideal—not with a mad man hot on my trail—but immediacy won out over self-preservation.

In my rush to get out of the truck, I tumbled down from the cab and landed on my knees in the grass. Part of me wanted to just curl up into a ball and stay there all night, but the more rational side of my brain insisted that I had to pull it together and get back up.

I forced myself to take in several deep breaths and then let them out again slowly. It took a moment, but my heart rate returned to normal, and the urge to vomit finally passed. By the time I was back on my feet, the fear, or whatever it was that I had been feeling, was gone.

I had let Logan get too close. I wasn't even sure how it had happened. Maybe I'd gotten complacent. Maybe my movements had been too predictable. Maybe it was all just a big coincidence, and we only happened to stay at the same motel.

_Yeah, right._

"Fucking forget about me, you stupid bastard!" I punched the side panel of the truck out of frustration and it left a dent. I didn't care.

I'd shot Logan at near point-blank range.

I punched the truck again, hard.

I didn't care, I _didn't_ care.

Kill or be killed, that was what he had taught me.

The throbbing pain in my hand helped to clear the remainder of the fog from my head, and I fell back into the familiar rhythm of planning my next move. My choices were limited as far as I could tell. I couldn't abandon the truck on the side of the road because I hadn't gone far enough to outrun Logan. He'd have an easier time tracking me if I was on foot, especially given that the vast farm fields of rural Oklahoma offered little cover. I was fleeing in the wrong general direction if I wanted to try to lose him in a dense forest.

My best option was to find a city to disappear in. I could do that, no problem. Logan would be long lost by suppertime tomorrow.

I was about to climb up into the truck when I heard a car coming towards me, on my side of the highway. I turned to look, without thinking what it would do to my night vision, and was temporarily blinded by the headlights. If I could see them, then the driver could definitely see me, which put me in a vulnerable position.

The car slowed as it approached, taking me from DEFCON 3 to DEFCON 1 in an instant. Mentally, I readied myself for any possible outcome. Even if it wasn't Logan, I still needed to be prepared. A cop would be almost as problematic, seeing as my recently fired gun was in plain view on the front seat, along with several hundred chunks of broken glass. I thought it'd be good if I could avoid drawing attention to myself, and it would seem more suspicious if I fled.

As the car came to a stop, I could see that it was a red sedan. An interior light came on, bringing the sole occupant into better view. Then the passenger side window rolled down, and a woman, a few years older than me, leaned over to speak out the window. "Evenin'," she said.

"Evenin'." I walked towards the car, since I didn't consider her a threat, and bent down so that we were roughly eye-level. The woman was wearing a blue Walmart shirt. I'd passed a Supercenter about eight or nine miles ago, so I figured that she was probably on her way home from work.

"Do y'all need help?"

I flashed her a sweet 'Marie' smile. "No, ma'am. I'm fine, thanks." It was dark, and my body blocked most of her view of the truck, so unless she got out of her car, there wouldn't be a problem.

"You sure? I've got a brother with a tow truck. He makes emergency calls."

"Yep, I'm sure."

"Well...all right. If you're sure...?" She looked as if she was trying to imagine a reason why a young woman, dressed all in black, would be alone on the side of the road in the middle of the night if her vehicle _didn't_ break down. I secretly hoped that 'vampire' was one of the possibilities that she had considered.

Time was a wasting, though, and I needed to get rid of her ASAP. Otherwise, I might've been tempted to tell her that I was waiting for my sire.

"To be honest with you," I confessed in a weary-sounding voice, "I've been driving all day, and I was starting to get a little tired. I thought walking around for a few minutes might help wake me up, but I think I'm gonna have to admit defeat and stop for the night."

The woman gave me a concerned frown. "You should have stopped in Enid. The next town on this road with a hotel is over an hour away."

"Really? Darn!" I made a show of looking back in the direction I'd come from, even though there was nothing to see. "Maybe I should turn back then."

"That's your best bet," she agreed. "There's a nice Holiday Inn across from the bowling alley just as you enter town. I know the night manager there. If you tell her Sara sent you, she'll give you a good rate."

"Thanks for the tip."

She nodded. "You have a good evening, now. Get some rest."

"I will. Take care."

As soon as her taillights faded into the distance, I got back in the truck. I needed to get moving again. The longer I stayed in one place, the more time I gave Logan to catch up to me.

I drove through the night because I was too keyed-up to sleep, and then traded in the truck in Amarillo the next morning. I explained away the damage as an accident, and slipped the guy at the dealership a little extra cash to not ask questions. I drove off in a dark gray minivan. It was completely inconspicuous and not anything that I, or Logan, would've ever driven given a choice. And that was the point. In hindsight, the truck had been too obvious. I liked it, and Logan would've as well. It would've been the first vehicle that he checked in the parking lot.

I found a hotel on the edge of the city, that was right off the highway, and close to a number of restaurants and a shopping mall. It was a little pricier than the motels where I normally stayed, but I wanted something with interior hallways because it gave me the illusion of safety.

After checking in, I went shopping. I'd had to leave all of my belongings behind in the last motel room, so I was in need of a change of clothes and other essential items. Usually, I tried to blend in with the crowd, but since I was still wearing my fighting outfit and dark make-up, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I caught more than one whisper of the word 'goth' as I made my way through the store.

I shopped quickly, stuffed all of my purchases into my new backpack, and then headed back to the hotel. I didn't intend to stay long—just until I had taken a shower and a quick nap. But as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep, and mercifully dreamless, sleep.

xxx

I was startled awake by the sounds outside my door. Some kids were running down the hall, and their parents were yelling at them to be quiet because people might be sleeping.

"People _were _sleeping," I corrected, muttering into the pillow.

But when I looked at the clock, I decided that I was actually grateful that they had woken me up. I had slept about five hours longer than I had meant to. It was time to get a move on.

My usual habit was to go looking for a fight, but my head just wasn't in the game that evening. I didn't even feel like going to a bar and knocking back whiskey until the room started to spin, which was my second favorite way to pass the time. Instead, I caught sight of the movie theater across from the hotel, and I let the bright lights of the marquee lure me in. Maybe on some level, I recognized that I needed a change.

I bought a ticket to the latest romantic comedy—something that the old Marie would've been excited to see. In my time on the road, I'd forgotten to do little things for myself. It was nice to sit in the dark, surrounded by others, and know that I didn't have to worry about keeping my guard up for the next one hundred and eighteen minutes of my life. I had forgotten how it felt to relax.

I stayed to watch the credits while I leisurely finished off my snacks. It had been a good movie, and if I ever spoke to Jubilee again, I'd recommend it to her. Although, knowing her obsession with the lead actor, she had probably already seen it twice. By the time the credits stopped rolling, and my giant popcorn and large box of candy were gone, I was feeling much more like my old self.

Sadly, that feeling vanished as soon as I exited into the hallway and ran straight into a solid wall of Logan.

The force of impact caused me to bounce backwards a step. In retrospect, I should have turned at that moment and run, but I was too confused to do anything besides stare up at him. He looked pissed, but that barely registered. My mind was still struggling to explain what I was seeing.

How in the hell had he found me so soon?

The only explanation that made sense was that he wasn't real. He couldn't be. I had fallen asleep in the theater, and this was what my subconscious had produced—Wolverine and Rogue reuniting in their very own rom-com.

If it followed the same script as every other movie I'd seen, then our chance encounter would end in him pulling me into his arms and kissing me desperately. Absence having made the heart grow fonder and all.

Instead, I felt his fingers dig into my shoulders.

_Okay, not a movie then._

My mistake, it occurred to me, as my confusion wore off, had been letting myself get so burned-out that I hadn't realized that I was being stupid. I'd gotten sloppy and stayed in the city where I had traded in the truck. _Fuuuck._ I knew better than that. Logan could've easily tossed his phone into the truckbed as I drove off and then tracked its location. Or maybe he'd caught up to me on the side of the highway back in Oklahoma and I hadn't noticed him trailing me all the way to Texas.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

He gave me a hard shake and then slammed me up against the wall. I was pinned in place by his forearm across my collar bone, and I could feel the fire alarm pull-box digging into my back. I wiggled my shoulders to try and relieve the pain, but that only caused him to push harder.

"Do you have _any_ idea how long I've been looking for you?"

I had some idea, yeah.

I evaluated my surroundings. We were alone in the hallway. Screaming for help would've probably attracted the attention of the people in the theater lobby, but I didn't figure that would actually accomplish anything useful. It wasn't like anyone would've been able to help me. And one look at Logan's enraged expression would have anyone sensible running for the hills.

What were the odds that he was going to murder me in a theater that had security cameras and witnesses? They had to be pretty low, I thought. Unless his personality had changed drastically in the past couple of years, it was far more likely that he would try to drag me out of the theater before ripping me to shreds. It was his mistake for giving me the time to find a way to escape before that happened. If our roles had been reversed, I would've have waited until he was in the parking lot before confronting him.

_Now who's the stupid one?_

Both of us were fairly well covered, and Logan was wearing gloves. Unlike at the motel, it appeared that he had taken precautions against my skin this time. My gun was back in the minivan, and it probably wouldn't have distracted him a second time anyway. I still had one thing left, however, and the element of surprise had worked well enough for me in the past.

Three bone claws slid out of each hand before I had time to reconsider. One set went through Logan's lung and out through his back. The irony of giving him almost the exact same wound he'd once inflicted on me did not go unnoticed.

He let up most of the pressure that he was applying to keep me in place, and stared down at my fist against his chest in utter confusion. I thought it said something about just how unexpected my move was, that his immediate reaction wasn't to retaliate in kind, and give me six new holes of my own. That was his second mistake.

"How the—"

My other set of claws went into his throat before he could finish that question. Bone scraped against metal-covered bone, and I must have managed to nick something critical because he started to go down. I kicked him back, off my claws, so that his dead weight didn't pull me with him.

Blood bubbled out of his mouth as he tried to draw a breath, or say something—I wasn't sure which. I stared in horror at my handiwork and heard a sickening gurgle coming from his chest as I backed away. My vision blurred, and it took me a second to realize that it was from the tears gathering in my eyes.

I managed to choke out two words. "Stop looking."

Then I pulled the fire alarm and ran like my life depended on it. My heart was pounding, and my feral senses had kicked into overdrive. The blood on my knuckles was making me crazy, but I ignored it. I ignored everything that wasn't necessary for my immediate survival. My vision narrowed, and my focus became singular.

Get to the van.

Drive.

Everything else became white noise, including the voice in the back of my mind that argued that my escape had been too easy.

* * *

A/N: So, uh, yay reunion? _*ducks*_

Also, R.I.P. another one of Logan's shirts. You know that's going to piss him off even if nothing else does. The man probably only owns like 4 or 5 total.


	5. All My Soul Within Me Burning

If I'd thought that the first time I made Logan bleed was rough, it had nothing on the second time. Despite the fact that he had barely touched me, I felt the memory of his claws pierce my chest all the same. That sharp ache refused to go away no matter how much alcohol I drank.

It shouldn't have hurt that much to take down my would-be assassin. Hell, I'd killed before. I'd maimed—in more brutal ways even. I'd seen a man disemboweled. Blood and gore didn't faze me. But watching Logan bleed, even knowing that he healed? It took hours before I stopped trembling. I couldn't get the scent of his blood off my skin for a whole week no matter how many times I washed my hands. The sound of him gasping for air continued to haunt me when I tried to fall asleep.

I went into complete panic/survival mode after the theater incident. I ditched the minivan, stole three cars, drove in erratic patterns, and didn't stop moving unless I was falling asleep at the wheel. Then I took the bus for a while, switching it out with the train where I could. I zig-zagged across the country, living on trains and in bus shelters for nearly four months.

It wasn't a bad life, really. I met lots of interesting people who were traveling to visit loved ones or who were on vacation, and in a way, it was a lot less solitary than how I had been living for the two years preceding my cross-country adventure.

I invented a new character. Her name was Coralee. She was a college student who was taking a year off to travel. Sometimes, she had a fiancé in the military, and she was traveling to meet him, other times, she was going home to stay with her family. Sweet Coralee with the heavy southern accent, who was such a vibrant and happy young woman. She was everyone's new best friend, and someone I might've been, in another life.

The money ran out in Wyoming. I had two options if I wanted to earn more in a hurry, and one was far more repugnant than the other. So, I became the Raven once again, and after stepping out of the cage with a grin and a pocket stuffed with cash, I struggled to remember why I'd stayed away for so long.

I put myself back on the circuit. The fights took me around the pacific northwest, up into Canada, and then back over the border into the U.S. again. I learned how to put on a good show, allowed myself to take hits, and made it look like I barely scraped by with a win. I was so much better than any of them ever realized.

Life was good. There hadn't been any sign of Logan in over ten months.

I got cocky.

That was a trait that I was sure was mine because I'd had it long before my mutation had manifested. It had gotten me into trouble with my momma when I was younger, and had caused me to have to pray for my salvation in church every Sunday. Maybe if I'd gone to church since leaving Mississippi I wouldn't have been on a fast track to hell.

Logan caught up with me while I was in the cage in a bar in North Dakota, not unlike that one in Laughlin City where we'd met. There was a certain sort of symmetry in that, which I appreciated in spite of everything else.

I didn't notice him at first because my back was turned. I was drinking the whiskey that they had brought me, while they rounded up another challenger. I'd already gone through three burly men, and because I'd had to stretch out the fights to make them look believable, and take more hits than I preferred, I was actually tired. I needed something more than alcohol to rebuild my energy reserves. I always did after I healed. Something about that process kicked my metabolism into overdrive and could only be satisfied by lots of protein.

I saw him in the crowd when I turned around to face my fourth opponent, and then took a boot to the jaw because I'd let myself get distracted.

"Yeah! You like that, honey? How'd that feel, huh, bitch?"

I cracked my neck and glared daggers at my opponent. _Okay, one problem at a time. Lay this guy out, and then…shit._ I didn't have an exit strategy. There was only one way out of the cage, and Logan stood between it and the door to the parking lot. I wondered if the bar had a backdoor.

I took another punch and was propelled back against the chain-link. The backdoor was irrelevant. I still had to get out of the cage, and Logan would reach me before I could manage that.

I was trapped.

The only thing—literally the _only_ thing—that I could do was prolong the fight. It wasn't much, but it would give me the chance to look for an opening. Even a momentary distraction on Logan's part could allow me to escape. All I needed was one ambitious redhead to chat him up and draw his focus away from me.

The smack-talker and I traded a few hits, until he got frustrated by the lack of progress he was making, and then he put me in a pathetic attempt at a choke hold. Done properly, it could've cut off my oxygen in about six seconds. Done his way, it just sort of hugged me back against his chest. He only had one arm around my neck. The other was around my ribs.

"You're not very good at this," I said.

"Don't pretend that you don't like it, honey." His breath was hot and humid in my ear. He slid his hand up and squeezed my breast. "Maybe after, we could get a room."

I pulled free and landed a punch on his face that would have him seeking out a plastic surgeon. "That's a 'no'."

I was declared the winner, but the rush I felt from the victory turned cold in a heartbeat. It had ended too quickly. I turned back to my corner. Someone had refilled my drink. I sipped it slowly because I could feel the walls closing in on me.

"We've got one more challenger for the Raven!"

_Good_. Anything to buy me more time.

"He calls himself the Wolverine."

My skin prickled in sudden awareness. I knew without looking that he was behind me, watching, waiting. I knocked back the remainder of the whiskey in one gulp, seeking whatever courage it could give me.

Only one of us would be walking out of the cage. I had trained for our inevitable encounter for almost three years, but I wasn't sure that it would be enough. No matter what I dished out, he would always heal from it. If I escaped, he would just keep hunting me. My only hope would be to grab onto bare skin and drain him dry. Nothing else had even a snowball's chance in hell of stopping him permanently.

_Kill or be killed_, I reminded myself.

I tugged my gloves off and turned to face my final opponent. Despite how he had been introduced, I expected to see Logan staring back at me. There was no trace, however, of Logan in the feral gaze that met mine. The animal had been let out to play, and he wasn't going to hold anything back. I should have been terrified, but something primal inside of me was pleased to have finally been given a _real_ challenge.

No words were exchanged in the cage. We didn't need them.

We put on a good show for the crowd, and they cheered us on. We were evenly matched and had similar styles, so the fight lasted longer than most. I had picked up a few tricks over the years and managed to land some solid shots. Logan hit like a hammer, though, and that damn metal skeleton did a number on me. I heard bones crack, but I couldn't stop to take an inventory of which ones. I was numb anyway.

At some point, the pretense of either of us being regular humans was dropped, and the claws came out. That drew an even bigger reaction from the crowd, and they yelled for blood. Deaths in the cage happened, but they were a rare occurrence. Fighters were typically stopped before they went too far. That night, however, I got the feeling that no one would be intervening. A dead mutant was considered a fair exchange for an evening's worth of entertainment.

Our audience wanted gore and we gave it to them in buckets. I was covered with blood, and so was Logan. We sliced and stabbed, and then healed so that we could do it all again. He was ready for anything I threw at him, and I deflected his blows as best I could. We were both tiring, but I was much worse off.

I needed to find an opening before I collapsed from exhaustion. I thought that if maybe I went for his throat again, I could take him down like I had at the movie theater. After that, getting within reach of his skin would be easy. All I needed was one tiny fraction of a second where he dropped his guard.

I got my chance when Logan lost his footing on the slick mat. He compensated to regain his balance, and while his attention was momentarily diverted, I took a well aimed lunge.

I knew as soon as I'd done it that I'd made the wrong move. In the process of attacking, I'd left myself open. Everything slowed down in that moment, but I was powerless to do anything except watch my right arm extend out towards its intended target.

_What was that piece of advice that Logan had given me once? Oh, right. Never get yourself into a situation where you're fighting desperate because you'll miss something important and make a mistake. _

The strike never landed because Logan had been waiting for it. Time sped back up again.

"Raaagghhh!" Logan sliced the claws from my hand with one set of blades, and punched into my chest with the other. Blood spurted out when he withdrew the claws.

Punctured aorta. It was the kill shot and everyone in the bar knew it.

The world faded, the noise dulled, and I could feel my heart slowing. I went down on my knees and then crumpled onto the sweat- and blood-soaked mat. Logan knelt next me, and I felt his fingers on my neck, like he was checking for a pulse.

I was bleeding out faster than I could heal, and I wasn't even upset. It was finally over. I didn't have to run anymore. "Thank you," I murmured.

He rolled me over so that I was on my back, and I caught one last glimpse of him before my eyes fluttered shut. At least, in the end, he'd shown me mercy.

* * *

A/N: Have faith, dear readers. We're only halfway through.

Also, I'd like to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone that has left a review so far. You all keep me going :)


	6. Deep Into That Darkness Peering

For a long time, I was aware of only darkness. I felt like I was wandering aimlessly, and for some reason, the Professor's lecture on the Underworld popped into my head. He'd told us that the ancient Greeks believed that after death, a soul arrived at the place where the land of the living met the land of the dead. A river separated the two worlds, but Charon would ferry the souls across in exchange for payment. Anyone that couldn't pay was doomed to spend one hundred years in the dark nowhere-place.

At the time, I had thought that his story was just that—a myth concocted to explain the unknown. But maybe it was supposed to be a warning. Maybe I should have always kept a coin in my pocket for the ferryman.

I was furiously trying to remember if the Professor had mentioned a loophole, or some way to swim across the river, when I heard something off in the distance. It was indistinct at first, but then the jumble of noises got louder, and separated out into objects that I could name. A door opening and closing. Water running. Thick-soled boots on a hardwood floor. I could smell dried blood, wood smoke, and coffee.

It was either one hell of a strange afterlife, or I wasn't dead.

"You can quit pretending, I know you're awake."

My eyes flew open at the sound of Logan's voice, but when the room came into focus, I found myself wishing that I was back in the eternal darkness. There was nothing good about my situation.

I was tied to a chair, which I wasn't happy about, but it didn't surprise me either. It would've been pretty stupid of Logan not to restrain me after our previous encounters. The part that concerned me, was that the chair was in a _cabin_, and not some random motel room. That meant that he'd succeeded in getting me to a remote location. Where no one could hear my screams.

"Mother_fucker._"

"Good morning to you too, darlin'." Logan smiled at me over his cup of coffee, but it wasn't a nice, reassuring smile. It was the kind of smile that a psychopath wore, and it sent a chill down my spine because I recognized the animal lurking behind it.

He really _was_ going to torture me. And now that he knew that I was hard to kill, he'd drag it out. If I didn't die from a punctured aorta, what would he have to do to kill me anyway? Cut off my head like a vampire? I was pretty sure I wouldn't heal if my head was no longer attached. Unless my head could survive on its own, and a new body would sprout from it like—okay, no, I really didn't want to picture that.

Had I known that I would one day be in a situation where I was permanently stuck with Logan's mutation, I might have thought to have had that conversation with him. Somehow the subject of, 'Hey, Logan, what do you think would happen if you were decapitated?', had never come up.

I took a quick inventory. Arms? Attached, but tied to the arms of the chair. The right one ached something fierce, which was probably my claws re-growing. Legs? Also tied, but I could still move my feet, which rested on the ground. I flexed my toes in my boots and the chair rocked a little. The ropes were tight around my mid-section, but not enough to cut off circulation or prevent me from drawing a full breath. When I wiggled in my seat, I could feel the chair bend with me. It wasn't very solidly constructed.

The main room of the cabin had an open floor plan, which gave Logan an unobstructed view of me from where he was standing in the kitchen area. I didn't feel in any way shielded by the coffee table and couch that were between us. I glanced behind me, but saw only a stone fireplace. I thought I might be able to use the iron fire poker as a weapon, but I would have to get to it first.

I briefly wondered if Logan would untie me if I told him that I had to pee, but immediately dismissed the idea. Considering the number of times he'd complained about characters on TV making that mistake, I doubted he'd fall for the cliché himself. I would have to come up with a better plan.

He set his mug on the counter and picked up the bottle of water that was sitting next to it. I watched him twist off the cap as he walked over to me. With his gloved hand, he grabbed my chin and pressed the bottle to my lips. I struggled against him, causing water to spill down the front of me.

"That wasn't very smart," he chided.

My lips remained closed, so he pinched my nose. I was prepared to pass out, but my lungs had other ideas. When I opened my mouth to gasp for air, he poured water down my throat. I coughed half of it back up.

"Stop being stubborn, and just drink it!" he commanded in his alpha-voice. Then, he pressed the bottle to my lips again.

I drank, but only because I was thirsty and I knew I had lost a lot of blood—not because he told me to. I couldn't imagine why Logan cared if I was dehydrated or not.

When the bottle was empty, he took it away and set it on the coffee table. He made no move to back away, and instead just stood, looming in front of me with his hands on his hips. I didn't like the expression on his face. It reminded me of the look he used to get when he caught a student breaking one of the rules at the mansion. It was a sort of 'you know what you did was wrong, so just apologize and accept your punishment because we will stay here all day until you do' kind of stare.

He was trying establish his dominance by being intimidating, but I took it as a direct challenge. If he thought that I was just going to sit still and wait politely for whatever the hell he had in store for me, then he had another think coming.

"Let's just get this over with," I said. I hadn't found a better plan, so I was going to have to wing it. "Here, I'll help."

I kicked my feet hard against the ground, which sent me and the chair leaping backwards. It was a stunt that I'd seen in a movie once, but had never actually attempted myself. I assumed that because the chair was so rickety, that it would break apart upon impact with the floor. That would cause the ropes to loosen, and then I would be able to jump up into a fighting stance.

It would have looked awesome.

The main problem with my assumption—because it turned out that there were several—was that I hadn't factored in my proximity to the fireplace when thinking about my backwards trajectory. What _actually_ happened when the chair hit the floor was that I heard a crack, saw an explosion of white sparks behind my eyes, and then the world faded out of existence once again.

"Damn it, Marie!"

xxx

When I woke up the second time, I was lying on my stomach on a bed. My arms were outstretched at my sides, and tied to the bed frame, but my legs were unrestrained. I was facing to the right, so that my left cheek rested on the towel that had been placed under my head instead of a pillow.

I could hear Logan's slow, deep breathing to the right of the bed, so I knew that he was in the room with me, but it sounded like he was asleep.

_Thank heaven for small miracles_.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been out. A kerosene lamp on the bedside table burned dimly, so I knew that it was night. That night? Another? It was impossible to tell.

The coppery-scent of blood saturated the air in the room. It wasn't like before, when it had just been what was leftover from the cage fight on my clothes. It was fresh, it was all mine, and there was a lot of it. Something primal in me reacted to that. I wanted to get away from it fast. It felt like there was a big arrow pointing to me that said 'Wounded prey here'.

I lifted my head, and immediately regretted not only trying to move, but every single one of my life choices that had caused me to end up at that point. The fiery-hot pain that shot up the back of my head was worse than any migraine I'd ever experienced, and if I could've stabbed myself in the eyeballs with my claws to get it to stop, I would have. I didn't even try not to groan.

Logan's breathing changed as soon as he heard me. Waking him up was just the icing on the cake.

"You cracked your skull open on the hearth," he said, his voice rough from sleep. "If I hadn't seen your brain myself, I would think you didn't have one."

I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself that it was a dream. Though, a cracked skull would explain the pounding in my head.

"You wanna talk about why you're trying so hard to get yourself killed?"

_Just a dream. A big, bad nightmare kind of dream._ "You should be grateful that I'm trying to spare you the trouble," I said.

The chair he was sitting in creaked in protest as he stood up. "You want to _spare_ me the trouble? I spent three fucking years trying to find you."

What was I supposed to say to that? Was I supposed to apologize? It wasn't like I'd asked him to come after me. I opened my eyes and glared up at him. "I told you to stop looking."

He stared back at me. "Did you really think that was going to work?"

No, but I _had_ hoped.

"I mean, you've still got some version of me in your head running the show, right? What did _he_ tell you?"

"To kill you," I spat back.

"Yeah? Well, you were always shit at listening to me."

"Then I guess we're even."

I yanked on the ropes but they felt strong and tightly knotted. The bed frame didn't so much as move either. All I managed to accomplish was to make myself feel dizzy and sick to my stomach.

It would serve Logan right if I threw up all over his bed. I should've just let him kill Jean and then wallow in self-pity for half a century. I had been wrong, he didn't deserve better.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked. "Just rip my head off or find a volcano to throw me in to. If you were ever my friend, you'd get it over with."

He had the nerve to look annoyed, and then he walked away.

"Just fucking do it already!" I yelled. I could hear him on the opposite side of the bed, but I couldn't turn my head to see what he was doing.

"I'm not going to kill you."

"Says the man that tied me up."

"For your own good. I didn't want you moving around. Still don't."

"Yeah, I'll bet." I pulled on the right rope with all my strength, until I felt it bite into my wrist. If I had to rip my damn hand off to do it, I was going to get free.

I felt a pinch on my left upper arm. "You can fight this, Marie."

I was trying, although I certainly wasn't making much progress. It made me think that Logan must really like watching his enemies struggle. "Is this fun for you? Because I'm having a blast."

Logan let out a heavy sigh, and then he came back around the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress next to me. "Look, kid, I know what it's like to have the animal take over. But there are ways of controlling it that don't involve trying to commit suicide by proxy."

I stopped pulling on the rope. It might have been the recent head injury messing with my ability to process the conversation, but none of what he'd said made any sense. "What are you talking about?"

"You _thanked_ me in the cage when you thought that you were bleeding out," he said, as if it was obvious. "I heard the relief in your voice, like you were glad that someone finally stopped you."

"_No_, I thanked you because I thought that you were showing me mercy. Now I know better." My limbs felt really heavy. Had they always felt like that? I didn't think so.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you're a sick, stadis—sadistic son-of-a-bitch who gets off on torturing your...you know..." What were they called again? M&Ms?"...people that piss you off."

"Is that what you think is happening here? Who said anything about torturing you?"

He really should have known the answer to that, and I tried my best to explain, but my mouth was having trouble making words. "Because…hate me. Wanna kill mmh."

"Why would I—? I was trying to help you, not—Marie?"

I was so tired. Closing my eyes seemed like a really good thing to do.

I was wandering in the darkness again. I couldn't remember what I was looking for, but it felt like I had almost found it before the lights had gone out.

"It'll be better when you wake up," a distant man's voice said. "I promise."

He sounded so much like my old friend Logan, that I decided to believe him.


	7. Tell This Soul With Sorrow Laden

A/N: It's been a while, I know. The hiatus was unintentional. A couple of unexpected, very stressful things happened within a few weeks of one another, and writing was not something that I could focus on. Life has somewhat returned to normal, at least for the time being (knock on wood), so I'm taking this opportunity to update.

* * *

It was morning, or possibly afternoon, the next time that my eyes opened.

_ Here we go again_.

The room that I was in hadn't changed, although I had been rolled over onto my back and a pillow had been placed under my head. The smell of blood, which had previously saturated the air, had largely been replaced by a mild, pine soap scent. That alone made me feel more calm and less like I wanted to chew off an appendage in order to get away from it.

I listened for signs that Logan was lurking nearby before I attempted to break free of my restraints, but didn't detect any. To my surprise, escape turned out to be much easier than I'd anticipated—and not just because I had been left unsupervised.

The ropes were gone. I had been tucked into bed up to my shoulders, but the only thing holding me down was a heavy wool blanket. I could freely move all four of my limbs for the first time since my capture.

_Weird_.

I got the distinct impression that something important had happened before I'd passed out. However, like an elusive word on the tip of my tongue, I couldn't seem to remember what. I remembered arguing, and Logan saying things that didn't make sense to me, but the exact specifics of what those words had been was fuzzy.

No longer spurred on by a sense of urgency, I allowed myself to lay there for another few minutes and wait for my memory to fill in the blanks. There had to be an explanation as to why Logan had untied me. But when one didn't materialize, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I pushed myself into a sitting position.

The first thing I noticed was that my splitting headache was gone.

_ Hallelujah_.

I probed my scalp for injuries, and found only a slightly tender spot at the back of my head. My hair was damp, but when I pulled my fingers away and examined them for blood, I didn't find any. It was just water, infused with that soapy pine scent.

I wiggled my way out of the covers and kicked them back. As I swung my legs out of bed, I felt cold air on my lower half. I looked down, but was at a loss to explain my bare legs, or why I was wearing a man's shirt. The last thing I remembered wearing was my fighting outfit. It had been ripped to shreds and stunk to high heavens, so I was glad to be out of it, but I didn't remember the part where I had taken it off. I peeked down the collar of the loose garment. Or had decided to go commando.

I started thinking that I was maybe missing a whole lot more from my memory than just a conversation with Logan. I could have lost _months_ for all I knew. I glanced down at my fingernails. Same dark green polish, and same indent on my right pointer finger from when I'd gotten impatient and smudged it before it was dry. Not months, then_._ I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

The simplest explanation, of course, was that Logan had done it. At some point after I'd drifted off, he had undressed me, washed all the blood off my skin and out of my hair, and then redressed me in one of his soft flannel shirts. I lifted my arm and brought my shoulder up to my nose to give it a sniff. One that he'd recently worn.

After having spent years running from him, the slightest whiff of Logan should have triggered my flight response. Instead, it had the opposite effect. An unexpected warmth bloomed in my chest, and I found the fact that he'd wrapped me in his scent..._comforting_.

My eyes fluttered shut. I was transported back to the night he'd found me after I'd come home from taking the cure. I'd almost gone through with it, but as I was waiting in line, I realized that it wasn't what I wanted. He'd stepped out onto the balcony where I was standing, not knowing if I'd gone through with it or not, and pulled me into a hug. I remembered being surrounded by his scent and feeling like, mutant or human, he'd always have my back.

I opened my eyes, and the illusion broke. The residual warmth still lingered, however. Nostalgia was funny like that.

When I stood up, I was able to get my first look at the entire room. It was modestly furnished. The chair that Logan had been sitting in was in the corner near a large chest of drawers, and there was a dresser on the far side of the bed, but no mirror over it. The only items on the dresser were a kerosene lamp, a ceramic bowl and pitcher, a comb, and a couple of folded towels.

The door opposite the foot of the bed was open, and upon investigation, I discovered that it led to a bathroom. Given the rustic furnishings, I was surprised to find modern fixtures and indoor plumbing. The bathroom was smaller than my en suite at the mansion, but large enough to contain a clawfoot tub, sink, and toilet. My wobbly legs carried me to the latter. I didn't know when I had last used the facilities, but it felt like it had been days. After I washed up, I splashed some cool water on my face. The extremely pale woman staring back at me from the mirror above the sink had dark circles under her eyes.

Despite outward appearances, I felt better—lighter—than I had in ages. The only experience I could compare it to was that time in fifth grade, when I'd gotten sick, and had had a really high fever. The hours had blurred together as I tossed and turned on blazing hot sheets, never being able to get comfortable. At one point, I'd been delirious, and according to my parents, had carried on an entire conversation with my dead grandmother.

But after what had seemed like days and days of feeling like I was never going to get better, I had fallen asleep, and when I woke up, the fever had broken. And just like that, my head was clear, and everything was back to normal.

That was how I felt, looking at my reflection. It was as if I'd woken up from the fevered dream I'd been stuck in for three years.

I just wasn't entirely sure _why_ I felt like the worst was now behind me.

I walked back into the bedroom, but didn't know what to do after that. I was fairly certain that if Logan had heard me moving around, he would've already confronted me. I supposed that it was possible that he'd gone into town, but it seemed unlikely, after everything that had happened, that he'd leave me alone. Even if he felt that I no longer needed to be restrained, he had to at least be worried that I'd retaliate and do something like burn down the cabin out of spite.

Which I hadn't completely ruled out as a course of action, but I'd hold off until I knew exactly what I was dealing with. Fire was always a last resort kind of thing.

The other door in the bedroom, located directly to the left of the dresser, was closed. Process of elimination meant that it was the one that opened into the rest of the cabin. I pressed my ear against against the smooth wood and strained my feral senses, but didn't hear anything on the other side. Quietly, I opened it a crack. I could see both the great room and the kitchen. Not a wolverine in sight.

I took a deep breath, and the smell of bacon hit me like a freight train.

Suddenly, I was ravenous. My senses zeroed in on the unattended plate of pancakes and bacon on the counter next to the wood cookstove. I couldn't help but think of those old Roadrunner cartoons where the coyote leaves birdseed out for the roadrunner in hopes of catching him. All that was missing was an arrow and the sign that said 'Free food'.

If it was a trap, at least I'd die with a full belly. Besides, the roadrunner had always managed to outsmart the coyote. Bolstered by this knowledge, I descended upon the small feast without any further thought of being cautious.

The pancakes had cooled, but the syrup had been left on the stove, so it was still warm. I wolfed down the whole stack in under a minute, not even bothering to use the fork, and then polished off what had probably been an entire pound of bacon. When I was done, I licked my salty, sticky fingers and tried to get my bearings. It was amazing how much easier that was to do when I wasn't focused on planning defensive moves and escape strategies.

Something about the cabin felt comfortable and familiar to Logan, so it did to me too. It was an eclectic mix of antiquated and modern, as if it hadn't been built with electricity in mind, and that had been installed much later. I thought that there had to be a generator out back supplying the power because Logan would never have bought a retreat so close to civilization that he was on the grid.

I heard a dull, whacking sound coming from outside. I put my plate in the sink—because I wasn't completely devoid of manners—and went to investigate. My full stomach had made me brave.

I didn't see my boots anywhere, so I pulled the front door open and stepped out onto the porch in my bare feet. I regretted my decision as soon as the first gust of wind reached me. The flannel shirt wasn't doing much to keep the frigid air from biting my skin, and having damp hair only made the situation worse.

The noise I'd heard was an ax hitting a log. Logan was off in the distance, chopping firewood. If the size of the pile was any indication, he'd been at it a long time.

There was no indication that he had seen me. I could've gone back inside, or hidden, or searched for a weapon, or hell, done a thousand things other than stay on the porch. But I didn't. It kind of felt like he was waiting for me, so I sat down on the porch swing and tucked my legs under me. I was foolish enough to want to see how this was going to play out.

To his credit, it wasn't long before Logan noticed that he had an audience. I saw the way his posture changed when he realized that I was watching him. He didn't come for me right away, however. Instead, he finished splitting the log he was working on, neatly stacked it on the pile with the rest, and then set his ax down.

He walked toward me at a slow pace, holding my gaze the whole time. It was hard, but I fought the urge to run. That was what you were supposed to do when being stalked by a large predator—don't become prey.

As Logan approached the porch steps, he tugged his white tank top off and used it the wipe the sweat off his face. Then, he hung the shirt on the railing. He stopped at the top of the steps, and didn't come any closer to the swing. "Did you eat?"

I nodded.

"How are you feeling?"

I shrugged. "Better."

"You're not a prisoner, Marie," he said slowly. "You can leave any time." He held up empty palms. "No tricks."

I considered his words. Even if I was free to leave, that didn't mean that I'd have an easy time of finding my way back to civilization. Maybe he was banking on that fact. "Where the hell are we?"

"Ontario. Near Ottawa."

His response was surprising. I had been thinking he'd taken me across the border into Saskatchewan or _maybe_ Alberta. I must have been out longer than I'd originally thought if we'd driven all the—_wait a second_… I narrowed my eyes at him as a couple of things clicked into place. That pinch on my arm last night had felt an awful lot like a needle. "Did you drug me?"

He shifted his weight, but didn't say anything.

"You did, didn't you? Where did you even—do you just carry extra-strength tranquilizers around with you?"

He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Hank gave 'em to me in case of an emergency. I thought it was the only way…"

"To _what_?"

"Get you here. I couldn't risk you waking up in the truck while I was driving."

"And last night? It was _last_ night, wasn't it?"

He nodded. "I didn't give you a full dose."

"Oh, well that makes it okay then. I mean, it wasn't like I was already tied up and couldn't go anywhere or anything."

"Do you want me to explain? Or do you want to just skip to the part where you stab me and run off again?" he asked, ire creeping into his voice.

It was a tempting offer, but reason won out. "Fine. Explain."

He took a deep breath, as if he was trying to calm down, or gather his thoughts. "You've heard of Humpty Dumpty?"

"Yes..."

"That was your head on my floor. And you know what I learned?"

I shook my aforementioned head.

"The brain takes fucking forever to heal. Your skull had just started to knit itself back together when you woke up."

_Ah_.

The part of the mutation that controlled healing always took care of our most critical injuries first. Organ damage, for example, was always fixed before minor cuts and bruises completely healed. It was like some sort of internal triage system.

Logan's body was built for his mutation, so he healed quickly, and for him, the process was almost simultaneous. My body, on the other hand, had had to figure out how to integrate this non-native, secondary set of powers along side my own. So, for me, the healing process was a little more drawn out. After the bleeding had been staunched, the remainder of my body's already overtaxed resources would've probably been devoted toward healing the brain damage. Skull and scalp would've only started to mend themselves afterwards.

An open wound explained the headache, and why I had been lying on my stomach, but I didn't think that it explained the ropes. "If I wasn't a prisoner, then why was I tied to the bed?"

"You were having seizures, and I didn't think that it was good for you to be moving around while your skull was in pieces. If I had known that you were going to wake up before it finished healing, I would've tranq'ed you earlier."

I couldn't be mad at that, I supposed. But I couldn't exactly say that I was happy either. Logan's bedside manner left a lot to be desired.

It occurred to me that if I wanted to, I could knock _him_ out. He was close, and there was so much bare skin between us, that it would have been easy. Too easy, in fact, and Logan would have known that. He wasn't wearing gloves, and he'd deliberately removed his shirt before stepping onto the porch. He had gone out of his way to tip the power balance so that it was in my favor.

"I don't get it," I finally said, the past few days finally catching up with me. "Why are you trying to make me feel—"

"What?"

"Safe." I said it so quietly, I wasn't sure that even with his enhanced hearing he would be able to pick it up.

He let out a long breath. "Am I not supposed to?"

_No? Yes? _ I felt like I didn't know anything anymore.

He frowned when I didn't answer. "I'm going inside to make lunch. You can stay out here, or you can join me. It's up to you." He didn't wait for a response.

I'd only just had breakfast, but I was still hungry, so I followed him back into the cabin. Besides, I was morbidly curious to see where our apparent truce was going to lead.

I somewhat warily took a seat at the kitchen island and watched Logan work. He opened the small door on the bottom left side of the stove, stirred the coals around, and then laid another log on the fire. His cookstove reminded me of my grandma's, only hers had been green and white enamel, and not black with silver accents. I yearned to bake some biscuits in it all the same. My grandma used to swear that the oven made all the difference, and had flat out refused to let my daddy buy her a modern electric one, even though it would have meant that she didn't have to light it every morning.

Logan pulled a platter with a couple of cleaned fish on it out of the fridge and set it on the island counter. "I caught 'em this morning," he said. "There's a pond down the hill from here."

I didn't know what else to say, so I just replied, "They look good."

"I don't have anything to go along with them, except maybe a can of baked beans. I only had time for a quick stop at the store the other day." He put a cast iron pan on the stove with a bit of oil in it, and while he waited for it to heat up, he seasoned the fish.

"That's fine. I don't need anything else." The protein was the important part, anyway. It would help my body recover.

I took in the sight of Logan's bare, muscular torso as he carried the fish over to the stove and transferred them to the hot pan. There was no trace of any of the wounds that I had inflicted—not that I had expected there to be. It was almost bittersweet that our bodies would never carry a permanent reminder of what we'd been through.

It also made me wonder about other things that I had never thought to ask him—aside from 'decapitation is a killer: yes or no?'. "Have you ever tried getting a tattoo?"

If he thought my question was strange, it didn't show on his face. "A few times. They don't last long."

"Right, of course." I pictured the ink being pushed out of his skin slowly, like what happens with bullets. The colors would probably ooze down his body and make it seem as though the tattoo was melting. I tried to decide if I was grossed out or fascinated.

He looked at me over his shoulder. "I know what you're thinking, but it's not like that. They just fade. I asked Hank about it once, and you know what he told me?"

I shook my head.

He turned back to the fish. "He said that human bodies get rid of tattoos by excreting them. Something to do with how the white blood cells work."

_Excrete?_ "Eew."

I saw the corner of his mouth twist up into a smirk. "Aren't you glad you asked?"

It had made him smile, so, yes, I definitely was.

When the fish were done cooking, he carried the pan to the table and then went back for plates and silverware. I sat, and he served me first. I stared down at my fish, while he dug in. I was having a hard time accepting that I was casually sitting at Logan's table, about to eat a meal that he had cooked for me. It was something that I had dreamed about, but hadn't seemed possible, even an hour ago.

"It's not gonna jump off the plate and bite you, kid."

I poked the fish's head with my fork, just to be a smart-ass, and he sighed in exasperation. Then he said the words that would ensure that my meal would taste like ash in my mouth.

"Eat, and then we need to talk."


	8. Let My Heart Be Still a Moment

Logan's ominous words hung over the table like a dark cloud on the horizon, and we both tried our hardest to eat lunch while ignoring the fact that a storm was coming. On the outside, I was the picture of calm as I demurely brought my fork to my mouth and remembered to chew each bite thoroughly. Beneath my placid expression, however, my mind was churning. I couldn't seem to decide which was the more likely outcome—that Logan was going to send me on my way as soon as lunch was over, or that he'd let me stay the night and then drop me off in town the next morning.

Either way, I didn't think he'd let me leave without getting whatever it was that he wanted to say off his chest. Because even if I believed that he didn't want to kill me, there was no way in hell that I believed that he was fine with what I had done, or how I had done it.

I would've gladly gone ten more rounds in the cage with Logan—all with the same result—if it meant that I could escape our after lunch talk. I already knew that he would never trust me again, I didn't need to hear him officially end our friendship. I wasn't sure that my heart could take it. There were just some wounds that a person couldn't recover from.

Even one with mutant healing abilities.

We finished our meal in silence, and despite my slow-eating tactics, I hadn't managed to stall for much time. As soon as I set my fork down and placed my hands in my lap, Logan got up from the table and jerked his chin toward the opposite side of the room.

It was time.

I stood up. My legs felt a lot more steady than they had before lunch, which was a good sign. I was going to need my strength if a hike into town was in my immediate future.

Of course, there was something else that I was going to need too. "Wait."

Logan stopped, but I could tell from the look on his face that he was wary of my intentions.

I couldn't blame him. It would be a lie to say that I hadn't thought about lunging across the table and knocking him out at least once during lunch, but old habits died hard. His caution, however, was unwarranted.

"Do you have a pair of sweatpants or something that I can borrow?"

Logan's gaze flicked down to my bare legs, as if he was just noticing them for the first time. "Shit. Yeah, just—hang on."

He disappeared into the bedroom for all of fifteen seconds, and then came back out wearing a clean, black t-shirt and carrying a pair of dark green sweatpants. He tossed the pants to me and I slipped them on underneath the flannel shirt. They were too big, and I had to roll up the cuffs, but I felt marginally more comfortable once I was fully dressed. I was glad that Logan had put on a shirt again too. His bare torso had been distracting.

"Okay?" he asked.

"I guess."

I sat on the couch, but Logan walked past the seating area, and went over to the massive stone fireplace. He spent a while rearranging the burning logs with an iron poker. Until recently, I would've assumed that he was heating up the metal tool so that he could threaten or torture me with it. Nothing short of heavy-duty restraints would've kept me on that couch while his back was turned. Now, I just waited patiently.

When he was done, he replaced the poker back on its hook. I expected him to turn around and finally start the conversation that he was so keen for us to have, but he didn't do either of those things.

Instead, for a long time, he just stood with one arm resting on the mantle and watched the flames. The muscles in his shoulders were tense, and I was reminded of the first time I saw him, in the cage in Laughlin City. I wondered if he was mentally preparing himself to fight a battle this time too.

I decided that it would be easier for us both if I just cut to the chase and offered to leave. "Logan—"

"You think I hate you."

As opening volleys went, it was a little baffling.

"I don't 'think' anything," I replied. "You chased me for almost three years. I _know_ you hate me." What I didn't understand was why I needed to explain that to him.

Logan's brow was furrowed when he turned to face me. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was confused. "I searched for you because I was _worried_. I was gonna try to convince you to come home. I wasn't _hunting_ you."

Some part of me knew, given the context of recent events, that he was telling the truth. But there was another piece of me that had trouble accepting it. It was hard to let go of the belief that my decision to run for my life had been justified. "You weren't mad _at_ _all_?"

He came over and lowered himself down onto the coffee table in front of me, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his thighs. There was less physical distance between us than there had been in years, but it still felt like we were miles apart. "I'm not gonna lie, when I woke up after the battle I _was_ pretty pissed at you."

I _knew_ it. I opened my mouth to basically tell him as much, but he cut me off.

"Let me finish. I was mad because I promised that I'd always protect you, and when you pull stupid shit like taking on Phoenix alone, it makes that hard for me to do."

I scoffed at him. "I had a plan. I knew _exactly_ what I was doing."

He looked like he hadn't expected that, and sat up straighter. "Then you obviously didn't think it all the way through—

"Actually, I did."

"—because if you'd waited thirty seconds, I would've killed her myself."

And that was the heart of the problem.

"Right, you would've done it because that's your 'job', isn't it? The X-men's executioner. Got someone that needs killing? Send Logan after 'em, he won't mind."

He nodded. "That was pretty much how it worked."

"That's bullshit." I hated how easily he had accepted that role—and how little he thought of himself. "You're not a machine, Logan. Every kill stays with you."

"Yeah, and all those deaths are on _my_ conscience," he said. "But now you've got this one on yours, and I don't understand why."

I stared down at my hands in my lap and toyed with one of the buttons on my too-long sleeve. Anything to avoid getting caught in what was sure to be a probing look from Logan. I was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that he might not hate me—an explanation of my actions was well beyond my ability to give.

Logan let the question-that-wasn't-a-question linger for a moment, and then wisely decided that I wasn't going to offer up any kind of answer. "Storm filled me in on most of what happened. I was out for almost two days."

_Two __days?_ Shit, I really _had_ taken too much.

"She said that Phoenix tried burning off your skin when you got close, but that you kept going."

If he was hoping that I'd tell him that Storm had gotten it wrong, I couldn't. Sometimes, in my sleep, I found myself trapped back in that maelstrom of fire, I and could feel the layers of my skin being stripped away. More than once, I'd woken up drenched in sweat and screaming in agony.

"I had to finish it." No matter how much it had hurt, or how much the Logan in my head had yelled at me to turn back, I'd had to keep going because I was the only one left that could. Then Jean had broken through, giving me the opening that I'd needed to stab her. By the time Hank had reached us, she was dead.

"Everyone knows that Phoenix needed to be stopped," Logan said. "They don't blame you for her death."

That just made it worse. I looked up at Logan. "She got control at the end. I didn't kill Phoenix, I killed Jean. So, now go on and tell me how much you don't hate me."

"I don't." He said it so easily that I almost believed him.

"Coulda fooled me. You _attacked_ me, remember?"

He looked at me like I was stupid. "I hadn't seen you in over two years, and instead of a hug and a 'Hi Logan', I got three slugs in my chest. Then, I got stabbed through the lung and the throat. Now, you tell me, who was doing the attacking in that scenario?"

"But in the cage—"

"I was tired of being your fucking pincushion!" he exclaimed, although he sounded more frustrated than mad. "You still had my mutation, so I knew you'd heal from whatever I threw at you. If you weren't going to hold back, then neither was I."

"It's a diluted version of your mutation," I said. "I thought I was going to die on that filthy mat."

His expression turned ashamed, and then his gaze dropped to the floor. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "So did I. I should've never let—" He paused. "I forgot who I was fighting."

Logan was lost in his dark thoughts, but the rift between us prevented me from reaching out and assuring him that it was okay. I wasn't even sure that it _was_ okay. Not if he hadn't intended to kill me when he entered the cage. If that was the case, then letting his feral side out to face me would have been a pretty fucking big mistake.

And if he hadn't been trying to kill me for the past few years, then what had _I _been doing?

I couldn't deal with the answer to that question, so I changed the subject. "How did you know that I was going to be at the bar that night?" I hadn't even made up my mind to go to the match until about a half an hour before it started, and I thought I had been careful to cover my tracks.

"I didn't."

"But then how—?"

Logan lifted his head. "I lost your trail after the movie theater, but I started thinking that if you still had me up here," he tapped his finger against his temple, "that you'd be doing what I'd do—or what I _used_ to do. So, I kept an ear to the ground, and when I heard rumors about the Raven, I thought she sounded familiar. I figured if I found a bar on the circuit and stopped moving around for a while, that you'd blow into town one day or another."

The idea that he'd let me come to him had never occurred to me, and actually, it pissed me off because it felt like I'd fallen into a trap. I'd spent all that time hopping trains and showering in bus stations, and there he was telling me that all I'd had to do was find a quiet town, get an honest job, and stay put. "Unbelievable," I muttered under my breath.

"You weren't exactly keeping a low profile," he said. "Maybe deep, down you wanted me to find you."

"Of course I didn't."

But it was clear from the look he gave me that he didn't believe me. That was okay, I wasn't completely sure I believed me either.

I had known when Logan grabbed me in the movie theater that it was all wrong for an ambush. If he'd truly wanted me dead that evening, I wouldn't have even seen his face. And if I had wanted to make myself invisible, then I would've gone off the grid completely, not competed in a semi-public arena on a weekly basis. Had I subconsciously been trying to attract his attention?

The truth sucker-punched me in the gut.

I pushed myself up off the couch because all of a sudden, Logan was too close, and I hated that he was able to see through me with a single look. I walked over to the fire and thought that maybe if I wrapped my arms around myself he wouldn't notice that I was shaking. Maybe if he did, he'd think I was cold.

How much of it had been real, and how much of it had been in my head? How had I gotten so good at being blind to what was so obvious in hindsight?

I heard Logan get up off the coffee table. He moved silently across the floor, but I could feel him standing behind me. His body heat penetrated through the flannel shirt and warmed my skin.

"Why 'the Raven'?" he asked.

"Why 'the Wolverine'?" I countered, thankful for the diversion. "I needed money."

"That's a shit way to make money."

I shrugged nonchalantly, as if the blood and violence hadn't affected me at all. "It beat whoring myself out at truck stops." Which I hadn't actually considered, but I knew it would bother him if he thought that I had. "Maybe that's how you would've preferred to find me? On my knees in a dark alley with my lips wrapped around a stranger's dick? Instead of fighting, we could've fucked."

He refused to take my bait and tossed back a barb of his own. "Nah, if I wanted a blowjob, there were plenty of women at the bar that would've sucked me off. And I wouldn't have had to wear a condom."

With my back to him, it was easier to brush off the sting that his insult about my skin had left. "Aw, if there's no risk of dying, then where's the fun?"

"That's exactly my point." He was at my side, leaning forward, hand on the mantle in front of me, half-caging me in. "You want to know what I think?"

"Not even a little." The fire was much more interesting than anything he had to say.

"I think that it was never about the money. I think that it was about satisfying your bloodlust." His voice was low and seductive in my ear. "You _liked_ fighting."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?" he asked. "The war was over, but you went looking for more action. Another hit of adrenaline. And then when that wore off, you went looking for another, and then another after that."

I spun around to face him. "That's not what I was doing!"

"You sure?"

"Yes!"

"Because no happy, well-adjusted member of society gets into that cage."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Pot, kettle, Sugar."

"Oh, I know _I'm_ fucked up. But what about you, _Raven_? How'd it feel when you stabbed me? Did you get off on making me bleed?"

"You want a repeat so that you can find out?" I popped my claws in an attempt to intimidate him, but with all the other healing that my body had needed to do, the broken set on my right hand hadn't finished regrowing yet. The bones were only about an inch long.

Logan snickered like I was a neutered puppy, so I retracted the claws and then punched him square in the jaw.

"Fuck you."

I stormed out of the cabin, letting the door slam behind me. I wasn't really sure where I was going to go, I just knew that I needed to put some distance between us. I didn't have it in me to run again.

There was a large pond on the property, so I made that my destination. It wasn't far, but it was far enough. I made no attempt to be quiet in my brisk pace along the downhill path, and I could hear birds and small animals fleeing as I swatted low branches away from me like they were flies. Unfortunately for my bare feet, the path was littered with pine cones, jagged rocks, and sharp sticks. It was impossible to avoid stepping on them all.

Logan would have absolutely no trouble finding me if he wanted. All he'd have to do was follow the colorful string of obscenities that I'd left behind in my wake.

My mood was even blacker by the time I reached the pond, and my feet were howling in pain. I sank down on a fallen tree and clutched my head in my hands. I wanted to tear my hair out, but I didn't think that would help.

I didn't know who I was anymore.

There had been warning signs—all of which I had dutifully ignored. Voices. A restlessness that drove me to want to keep moving. Changes in personality that I had chalked up to the stress of living on the run. I thought that I had changed in order to adapt to my new lifestyle, but what if it had actually been the other way around?

Why _had_ I gone looking for all of those fights?

The scary part was that I couldn't say that Logan was completely wrong. I _had_ enjoyed them—_craved_ them even.

_Fucked up indeed._

For better or worse, I didn't have long to dwell on my identity crisis. Heavy footsteps came down the path behind me. Thankfully, Logan had enough sense to stop a few feet away. I sat up, but didn't turn to look at him. In my mind, I pictured him leaning against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest. He was probably giving me the stink eye too.

"Did you bring your rope?" I asked. "You wanna try tying me to this log next?"

"Would it help?"

"It might give me hypothermia if you left me here overnight."

"You'd survive." He sounded like he knew from experience.

"In that case..." My shoulders sagged as the fight left me, and I felt utterly deflated. I was so tired of arguing. "I don't want to do this right now. Can you just give me like, an hour? And then I promise you can yell at me all you want."

"I didn't come down here to yell," he said.

"Well, whatever then."

"Look, I'll leave you alone, but I want you to listen to something first."

I sighed. I knew he was going to tell me whether I wanted to listen or not. "What?" I asked flatly.

The scathing words that I expected to hear never came. "I said some stupid things back there," he admitted instead. "And I shouldn't have provoked you like that. You won't believe me, but I wasn't actually trying to pick a fight."

"Neither was I." That it had happened anyway was proof that we knew all too well how to push each other's buttons. It had always been easier for us to argue than to admit our true feelings.

"I deserved that punch," he offered.

Maybe, but that didn't mean that I should have thrown it. The old Marie wouldn't have been so quick to resort to violence.

I pushed away that troubling thought as I burrowed my toes into the cold grass. "What did you do with my boots?"

"They're in the mudroom, drying. I had to hose 'em off."

It made sense; they would've been bloody too. "I hope you burned my clothes." I never wanted to see, or smell, them again.

"More or less."

Which meant that the grand total of my worldly possessions, outside of what I'd left at the mansion, consisted of a soggy pair of leather boots.

"I'm going to have to go shopping," I said, thinking out loud. Although, I used the term 'shopping' loosely. It was more likely that I'd have to go shoplifting or pick-pocketing. I didn't like to steal if I could avoid it, but my options were limited. I wouldn't get very far in an outfit that could be called 'lumberjack chic' at best, and 'escaped convict on the run' at worst. And, as I had discovered that morning, "I don't even have any underwear."

Logan let out a resigned-sounding sigh and then said, "Your backpack's in my truck."

That was news to me. He must have taken it out of my car after the cage fight. "You didn't think to mention that earlier when I needed pants?" I asked over my shoulder.

"You didn't ask for _your_ sweatpants, you asked to borrow a pair of mine." He sounded completely serious, and he may have even had a point. Still, something didn't quite add up.

I tried to picture Logan taking the time to search the bar's parking lot for my car, while my unconscious body was slung over his shoulder, bleeding all over the place. It just didn't seem like something he'd do. It would have been too risky, and besides, he couldn't have known that I had locked anything of value in the trunk.

However, if he had seen me in the parking lot and grabbed my bag _before_ going into the bar, then that was a different story altogether. Taking it before the fight meant that his actions were premeditated, and that he'd fought me with the intention of incapacitating and then kidnapping me.

"When did you take it?" I asked. "Before or after the fight?" It was an important distinction, and I needed to know.

I got the sense that Logan didn't want to answer my question, because when he finally replied, "In Oklahoma," it sounded an awful lot like he'd had to force the words out of his mouth.

And I immediately knew why. If he'd taken my abandoned bag from the motel after I'd shot him, then it meant that he'd been carrying my stuff around with him for almost a year.

I had been a shitty friend and a poor excuse for a human being, and in return, Logan had hung on to my belongings, taken care of my injuries, cleaned me up, and fed me two meals.

I didn't deserve any of it.

I heard him start back up the path, probably thinking that I still wanted to be alone. I couldn't see into the future, but somehow I knew that if I let him leave, and we didn't finish the conversation that we'd started in front of the fire, then it would be over for real.

A nightmarish sequence of events played out in my mind's eye—I'd head up to the cabin, find my bag waiting for me, and then ask Logan to take me into town if he didn't offer to do it first. The ride would be silent, and I would climb out of his truck because he wouldn't stop me, and then I'd disappear into the crowd. He wouldn't search for me a second time, and I'd never see him again.

Panic welled up inside of me, and I could feel my throat start to close off. I had to say something, do something because I couldn't lose him. I willed my lungs to work, and forced out a sound.

"Logan!"

He stopped. Waited.

I didn't know how to apologize for what I had done. I felt like I couldn't even explain half of it. But there was something that I could set straight.

"I _did_ like fighting," I said. "I liked the high that I got from winning. But it made me physically ill to have your blood on my hands. And I almost threw up after I shot you."

I heard him take a few steps closer to me. "I still don't get what made you think that I was going to torture you."

What part of revenge was so difficult to understand? "I took advantage of our relationship so that I could knock you out, and then I killed the love of your life. I _betrayed_ you. I've seen you do horrible things to people who have done much less. I was terrified of what would happen if you caught me."

"And that was why you ran." He said it slowly, like he'd just figured out something important. I was glad I wasn't facing him because I could hear the hurt in his voice, and it tore at me.

I just nodded.

He chewed on that for so long I thought that maybe I hadn't heard him leave, but then the log shifted as he sat down beside me.

"I woke up and you were gone, and no one could tell me why," he said. "They had all these theories, like you'd left to take the cure, or Phoenix had fried your mind. Hank said you'd probably suffered a psychotic break. But I thought that it was maybe like the last time, and that you ran because you were worried about what the others would say about you using your powers like that." He paused. "I didn't know that you were running away from _me_."

I was supposed to be the one person in his life that wasn't afraid of the Wolverine. Tears pricked at my eyes and I drew in a shaky breath. "I'm sorry."

"That's not—" He shook his head. "For someone that knows me so well, you got a lot of things wrong. How could you think that I would hurt you? And the cage fight doesn't count."

I remembered his voice, taunting me with threats of revenge. "Because you said—"

"_I _said, or _he_ said?"

I felt my stomach drop. Obviously, it hadn't been Logan threatening me, since he had been unconscious at the time, but that voice in my mind had sounded just like him. And for some reason, I had listened.

"Kid, we were in the middle of a fight for our lives. The animal was going to be front and center, and he sure as shit wasn't going to be happy about being taken out before the kill. He wasn't going to be whispering sweet nothings in your ear afterwards."

I knew that. Of _course_ I knew that. But that was the problem with my powers. All those stolen thoughts and emotions mixed with mine until I couldn't tell them apart. Hell, hadn't I even taken Logan's mutation and made it my own without even thinking about it? What did I do when threatened now, like it was second nature? I popped my claws.

Where did Wolverine end and Rogue begin?

"You were right about what you said yesterday," I admitted, as much as it pained me to do so. "You're still in my head, and I don't know what's been you calling the shots and what's been me."

"Hey." He nudged me gently with his shoulder. "I'm gonna help you figure it out. Why do you think I brought you up here instead of taking you back to New York?"

_To murder me?_

"I don't think you want me to answer that."

He rolled his eyes. "Because I thought it'd be better for you if it was just us and no pressure. After I saw the claws, I thought I understood what was going on."

A few things suddenly made a lot more sense to me. "You thought I went feral."

He nodded. "It explained everything," he said. "Why you ran, why you were acting like I was intruding in on your territory, the violence-seeking...all that. I struggle with it sometimes even on good days, and with your track record—"

"You mean my inability to control my own powers?"

"Yeah. I just assumed that you couldn't control mine either."

"So, you tied me to a chair and tried to remind the animal who the alpha in charge was." In the back of my mind, I remembered him doing something similar when Teddy, the half-bear student, had come to Xavier's. If I _had_ been feral, his tactic probably would've worked.

"But instead, all I did was make you want to escape so badly that you were willing to risk brain damage just to get away from me."

"You didn't know," I said. "And for the record, I was trying to break the chair, not my head."

He raised an eyebrow. "Like in that movie we watched? There's a reason why I never taught you that move in the Danger Room."

"There were a _lot_ of moves that you never taught me," I said, sounding more bitter than I had intended.

"Maybe you left before I had the chance."

"Or maybe you took your sweet ass time gettin' to the good stuff."

"Maybe I didn't think that you were ready for the 'good stuff'," he countered.

Were we still arguing about training? "Sugar, I've been ready since I was seventeen."

He made a non-committal grunt and turned his focus back to the pond.

An awkward silence stretched in front of us.

I knew where we were, and I knew where I wanted us to be, but I didn't know how to get us there. I wasn't even sure that it was possible to restore our broken relationship back to what it had formerly been. I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to know. "Now what?"

"That depends," he replied. "You done running for a while?"

I was never going to run again. "Yeah."

That one word was all that it took.

"Good, because I fucking missed you."

I inhaled sharply. "I missed you too, _so much_." It was impossible to convey as much emotion as I felt into those last two words, but damned if I didn't try. I scrubbed away the tears that had filled my eyes with the cuff of the flannel shirt.

Logan's arm came around me, and I tucked my head under his chin. I breathed in his scent of pine and wood smoke as he pulled me into a hug.

"You could do almost anything, Marie, and I wouldn't hate you. Hell, you could try to kill me, and I'd still make you pancakes in the morning."

I let out a watery laugh. It was the sweetest, stupidest thing he'd ever said to me. "You know you're crazy, right?"

He chuckled softly. "Don't pretend like you're just figuring that out now."

"No, I've known for a while," I assured him.

"So, not a deal-breaker then?" he teased.

"Nope."

This time when the conversation lapsed into silence, it was comfortable. I relaxed into Logan's embrace, and my tears eventually dried. The storm clouds on our horizon cleared, and the weight that I had been carrying was lifted off my chest. Together we watched the sun dip behind the treetops on the opposite side of the pond. For the first time in recent memory, I looked forward to the future.

"What d'ya think?" Logan asked. "Time to head back to the cabin?"

I hadn't been joking about the hypothermia. It was getting cold fast. I supposed that there was no point in freezing my ass off, literally, when I could be sitting in front of a nice, cozy fire.

I nodded in agreement and Logan unwrapped himself from around me so that he could stand up. I felt the loss of his body heat immediately. He offered me his hand, and I took it through the sleeve of the flannel shirt, allowing him tug me up into a standing position. I winced as something sharp stuck my foot.

"Are you going to let me carry you up the path, or are you going to be stubborn?" he asked.

If he was giving me the choice? "I'm going to be stubborn."

"Marie."

I looked up and met his eyes with a level gaze. "I don't need you to take care of me, Logan." It was important to me that he understand that. I was his equal, not a student, or a patient, or a helpless girl hitching a ride. I could survive with or without his help.

He held my gaze while I held my breath and wondered if we were headed back into another fight. What he said next could make or break our truce.

"I know you don't. You haven't for a long time," he admitted. "But sometimes, I think you like it when I do. And maybe... Maybe I like it when you let me."

My heart nearly melted right there on the spot.

He tilted his head at his shoulder. "C'mon, hop on."

I hesitated only few more seconds and then grabbed hold of Logan's shoulders and jumped onto his waiting back. He gripped my thighs as they wrapped around his waist, and I put my arms around his neck.

In that moment, there was no place in the world that I would have rather been. To think that I had almost been successful in cutting Logan out of my life was unfathomable. How could I have survived without the other half of my soul?

I kissed Logan's bearded cheek, grateful for once that I wasn't the only one who was stubborn. "Thank you for not giving up on me."

"It was never even an option, darlin'."


End file.
